Cinema camera-maker Red’s eagerly anticipated Hydrogen One phone is almost here — preorders are slated to start shipping this week — and I had a whirlwind night and day to shoot with it before shipping it off to our phone reviewer. The company cautioned us that the software wasn’t quite finished yet, and yes, there were some rough edges. But for the most part, it worked as expected.
The camera app doesn’t offer raw (at least not yet) and the “real” camera module won’t be available for a while. it has dual rear 12-megapixel f/1.8 cameras and dual 8MP f/2 selfie cameras — not for zoom, but for depth mapping to create H4V files for its 3D display.
Indoors
ISO 800, 1/125 sec. It took some work to get Kane to sit still enough to photograph with a phone.
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ISO 651, 1/35 sec.
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There’s simulated depth-of-field mode (I refer to it as “background defocus” below) that crops in but maintains the same resolution. The standard framing (left) vs. the simulated depth-of-field mode framing (right). The mode works for everything, not just faces, and when used in some scenes results in a tilt-shift effect.
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ISO 1179, 1/35 sec., background defocus.
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Selfie, ISO 1526, 1/20 sec. Dan didn’t realize there was a physical shutter button and that he was holding it down as he moved the camera around. Now I have hundreds of selfies of Dan that were automatically uploaded to Google Photos.
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Night
ISO 1731, 1/35 sec.
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ISO 6400, 1/25 sec. ISO 6400 is the highest sensitivity available.
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ISO 3059, 1/25 sec., color saturation set to zero, HDR. I didn’t find the grayscale preset effect until the next day, so used the color tools to produce a monochrome image.
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ISO 826, 1/35 sec., HDR
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Daylight
ISO 100, 1/280 sec., background defocus. I love New York.
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ISO 101, 1/9,000 sec.
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ISO 100, 1/250 sec. Colors!
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ISO 100, 1/280 sec.
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Watch this: All of your Red Hydrogen One phone questions answered
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